How would you like to trade a market where you get large regular price swings every 10 minutes in the afternoon, seven days a week. A
market where all prices are set purely by supply and demand, few transaction costs, no middle men and you only pay commission if you win? Where you can freely act as a market maker and where you have direct market access and where you can create a spread for others to take?

Betfair has revolutionised the betting market and created an open platform for exchanging risk on sports events. This market is now viewed much more like a traditional financial risk market than an old fashioned betting market. Smart users have realised that there are huge opportunities on Betfair because they can buy and sell risk in much the same way they would in a normal financial market but without the burden of cost or the restricted access that is usually associated with traditional financial markets.

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Laid off my bet, so if Dow is up I'm level, if its down I win. Looks like up tho

Greened up on Man City vs Norwich before kick off so a win whatever happens during the match.

greened up scrip ????

Missed the chance to grab a screen shot as Man City 1-0 up already. See the England Poland example in the top right hand corner. The P&L is green on each line so I win whatever the result. The process to achieve this is nicknamed, "Greening up"

Script
Been trying to Green up but never seem to quite get there. Will have to attend a course.

One thing, the way you bet, do you need to have a substantial sum deposited with betfair (1000+)

Is it a case of big stake small margin

jeff, You need to turn it on its head. Work on the basis of "I want to win X", I measure mine per tick. Then that defines your bank. You would start when you are learning at maybe 1 a tick then increase that as your confidence grows. Over time the capital I have at Betfair has grown quite a lot so I take large positions when I am confident that the position will mature.

jeffmack

I developed this formula to "green up". I have it programmed on a programmable calculator for convenience, but you could translate it to a spreadsheet formula. It looks a little forbidding but once you get the hang of it, it is simple to use and covers a lot of situations. Most importantly you can use it whatever the state of your book at the time. You don't need to know the overall back or lay that you are trying to close (which would not be obvious if you have carried out a string of backs and lays).

STAKE=CLOSEDOWN*(-(1-TOUP)*UP+(1+TOUP)xDOWN)/(2*TOUP-(1+TOUP)*ODDS)+(1-CLOSEDOWN)*((1-TOUP)*UP-(1+TOUP)*DOWN)/(2*TOUP+(1-TOUP)*ODDS)

Where:

"up" represents the top line on Betfair for a two-outcome event, or the outcome you are trading for a multiple outcome event, "down" represents the bottom line on Betfair for a two-outcome event, or the rest of the field for a multiple outcome event

CLOSEDOWN = 1 if you want to use the bottom line to "green up", 0 if you want to use the top line
TOUP = 0 if you want to "green up" totally, 1 (100%)if you want to move all the profit/loss to the top line, -1 (-100%) if you want to move all the profit/loss to the bottom line, .3 if you want to move 30% to the top, etc. etc.
UP = the amount you currently have as profit(+)/loss(-) on the top
DOWN = the amount you currently have as profit(+)/loss(-) on the bottom
ODDS = the odds you wish to "green up" at
STAKE = the stake you should back or lay to green up at those odds (be careful of the direction, which will however be obvious from your book)

The formula will "green up" as well as "red up" if you are actually in loss. As in trading, it is a lot more difficult to "red up" (take a loss) than "green up" (take a profit)!

So for instance if you have +105 on the top and -50 on the bottom, and odds of 1.4 are available on the top,

CLOSEDOWN = 0
TOUP = 0
UP = 105
DOWN = -50
ODDS = 1.4

which will give you a stake to lay of 110.71 at 1.4 to "green up" fully, giving you 60.71 profit top and bottom.

Kayak
Thanks, I will try to decipher it.

Managed to get in a win all ways situation after the Norwich equaliser. After the Man City goal I back Norwich at 18.5, so laid some off.

Kayak, that's dreadfully complicated! To green up you simply divide your line P&L by the current lay odds.

Jeffmack, I can send you a spreadsheet if you wish. Drop me an email.

Script
Message sent via MAM, thanks

The formula is complicated Scrip, but it is buried in my calculator and I never see it. It handles partial greening up and also e.g. backing the opposite side rather than laying. All things you could work out by hand but it would increase the potential for errors. Also it forces me to think in terms of top and bottom on the screen which again removes a lot of the potential for errors. I'm sure I'm not alone in having occasionally backed rather than layed or backed the top outcome rather than the bottom.

I think I'll do the degree course first or maybe nightschool-1 day sure as hell won't cover it:)

I do think that, at first, the concepts involved are quite difficult to grasp. I devised for myself some calculations to do as 'exercises'. They helped me to get my head round things more easily.

eg, A 'Bet' has been placed on the Democrats to win the USA Election. After a time the odds change for both 'Bet' and 'Lay' and the following position is resultant:-

Republicans: Bet 1.71 / Lay 1.73
-100.00

Democrats: Bet 2.36 / Lay 2.4
300.00

Starting from a position like this, one can then work out what would be effect made to it after doing various sizes of Bets and Lays to each of the two sides and what would happen with a particular event result.

Next, one can add a third 'political party' (runner, player, etc) and do similar exercises.

Eventually, the concepts become much easier to understand and you begin to be able to spot the potential for the doing of various things. I suppose doing this kind of stuff just made me that bit more familiar with it.

I'm afraid I couldn't understand the two 'points' lists above and Kayaks formula lost me completely. I think they assume the reader (me) has possession of various types of other basic information. For me this assumption was incorrect. :-)

I cant work any of that out.Its seems very complicated for a CSE Maths boy.

Reminds me of traded options.

I spent ages looking at all the diffrent plays buy,sell, write, combis ect,before coming to the conclusion in my view anyway that the odds were nearly always against you :)

Not saying that is the case here though.

Iain; I find it very easy,not, although I have a BSc ( Bronze Swimming Certificate):-)

It would help if betfair was not down today for 5 hours.

LOL.

Tim3, the comparison between betting exchanges and traded options is a good one. Some of the characteristics of options are there. However Betfair is much much more liquid than UK traded options markets, with much tighter spreads. The gradual decay in value of an option (which makes any strategy based on buying, rather than writing, options a mugs' game) maps on to the tipping of the odds towards one outcome or the other as the end of the bet approaches and the outcome becomes more certain. However you can easily get onto either side of this movement, and in any case in many/most cases it is dwarfed by the possibility of the event itself taking a different turn, e.g. horses falling at the last hurdle or a goal being scored in the final minute, so that much of the decay will often occur very quickly in the last few seconds of the event when the outcome is very nearly certain.

Just did something funny. Working in some positions for tonights Champions league matches. Laid instead of backing and took a huge chunk out of the Arsenal market. Must have caused some panic after seeing the markets reaction to my bet. Fortunately was able to correct the error without a loss but much fun was had!

I am expecting a bumper night tonight as the liquidity on Champions league matches are great. However I noticed Porto Vs PSG had better odds on http://www.gamebookers.com.